Talk:Bycatch
Bob McDonald sent a long message called "Bycatch beyond commercial fishing" to the Fishfolk email list in December 2005. With some abridgment etc plus headings and links, here it is as a talking-point. Hi Folks and Mike, It is a bit rough pointing the finger at the commercial fishery alone for bycatch. Sorry about the length of the post but this thread skipped across so many issues that one cannot possibly deconstruct spin with more succinct spin. Meaning Firstly you and the bodies you quote seem to assume that 'bycatch' is a term with a consistent meaning, that all bycatch dies and that all animals caught as bycatch have their populations threatened by it. Good for TV/newspaper stories but a sweeping generalisation that simply increases the bad PR for the existing commercial fleets. Non-target marine fish crab and mollusc species in many fisheries are either landed live and thrown back, sent to market or eaten by crew. By definition bycatch is non target and inefficiently caught - especially fish - so logically fish bycatch is not a threat to those species. Yesterdays bycatch, here gummy shark a minor component of the past school shark hook fishery, is today's catch. The inability of marine scientists to understand the relative efficiencies of fishing gear and methods - a very poorly studied area surprisingly - means that they are often tempted to apply conventional catch per unit effort Analysis to bycatch. CPUE simply assumes that all variation in catch is due to variation in stock size. But it might be that the species is hardly caught by the gear and method used, CPUE on gummy shark in the 1960's would show them as threatened as this method would show Cod in NE USA - but is would have been very very wrong. Gummy shark is now the basis of a fishery fished well below its sustainable level according to the most conservative marine scientists. The school shark stocks were shown to be threatened simply because the change in method, from longlines to gillnets, made catching them a totally different proposition and they became a bycatch as the price for their meat with it shards of cartilage fell. Bycatch controls It is agreed that in western society that dolphins, whales, turtles, seabirds etc, should not be landed. Over the last 20 years commercial operators from all over the world have been paying for in cash and time the development and implementation of practical bycatch controls now available for all these species for every type of fishery. The best of the prawn and scallop trawl and dredge fisheries prefer to work specific grounds where the best catches include the least rubble, dead on non target species shell, need the least sorting. "Bycatch" in other primary industries On land Unavoidable bycatch has to be seen in context with other primary industries. Millions of hectares of native vegetation, prairies, other grasslands, woodlands and forests have and thousands still are cleared so we can eat the food we like and where the clothes we like and have jobs. The 'bycatch' of these industries, including the mining industry, is at times huge - thousands and thousands of birds, plants, animals are killed to develop mines and farms. Effects on aquatic life For fresh and saltwater life thousands of hectares of wetlands along estuaries and bays are lost to these industries. The contamination from mines and farms further pressures these nursery grounds and leads to fish and birds kills annually across both out nations. Adult fish population lose their ability to rebound and no longer visit many accessible areas where they have been fished in the past because the water quality has been compromised, the habitat they need for shelter is lost or the food that once brought them there is no longer reliably abundant. The water we westerners divert for drinking, sewerage, gardens, industry, carwashing and agriculture strips uncounted millions of individual species from catchments and deprives others that once visited coastal estuaries of the once huge amounts of 'fish food' larger flows would bring. Encourage fishery improvements Across all industries we must reduce this 'bycatch' - but it is pointless and counter-productive targeting commercial fishing industry when so many millions of dollars worth of excellent work has been paid for and many hundreds of modifications have been made to fishing practices worldwide in the last twenty years. It is better to give industry encouragement, time and resources to adopt these management practices universally and continue their development. Meanwhile other 'bycatch' issues are starved of research funding and publicity and the very concept of ecological management - from the top of the catchment to the sea - is barstardised. Recreational fishing The bycatch from the recreational fisheries in the west is huge - likely as large or larger than the commercial fisheries in Australia. With unlimited numbers fishing and inconsistencies in gear used, areas fished and times fished, tens of thousands of 'rubbish fish' are likely left to die on beaches. It is getting better - but rec fishing organisations lack the resources to tackle issues that go to the majority of recs well beyond their membership. Last week we saw thirty dead banjo sharks on our beach from two rec fishers who didn't send them back - mitre than local Inlet fishermen release in a day unharmed. In the sixties when recs did not realise they could eat gummy shark if they gutted them straight away they used to pile their bodies in stacks along the ninety mile beach that stretched for miles after the summer holidays. (Everyone wanted to rid the world of 'pest; species then. The US government even attempted to wipe out sharks in the nineteen fifties I believe.) The bycatch from two stroke motors is even larger, with massive zooplankton kills on calm days in sheltered waters of larvae of hundreds of marine species including fish and fish food. The bycatch from the oil industry is huge too. The seismic blasting which has remained remarkably little studied, oil spills and the clean ups, large and small. Oil contamination from urban and highway runoff and industrial discharge, the destruction of fish nursery grounds for terminal and refinery construction. As we all share the use of oil we are all part responsible of this bycatch. Recreational fishing, especially the lucrative sport fishing market, provides the impetus for one of the greatest sources of multi species bycatch - marine and resort construction. annual millions of fish are hundreds of species are either never born or die because habitat essential to their survival is lost. The recreational bait industry has a large amateur component too that turns over rocks on reefs both tropical and temperate looking for worms and other bait, churning many of these nursery grounds to black mud. Bad management by local councils has seen many temperate western reefs stripped of shellfish that are taken for food and bait of all species and sizes. The larvae of these shellfish are critical to many and and estuarine ecosystems and the basis of many food chains, If the privatisation of fisheries in the USA is successful - the real motivation for this press campaign I suspect - then the marine scientists and governments will turn on the uncapped recreational sector next - as they have in Australia. You will have to have a licenses for any boat anywhere, require a sperate license to drive it costed to recover enforcement expenses - you will likely have to wear a lifejacket that is 'certified' any time you get in any boat, you will have to carry prescribe list of safety gear from bailing buckets to flares and pay ever increasing fees and levies to cover the increasing costs of management. There are hefty fines for any bits missing. All this is in addition to a proliferation of coastal Marine No-take areas that will target sheltered water fisheries preferred by rec fishers - about 5% of the best of reach states waters. In Queensland Rec fishing groups are claiming a 10-30% decline in recreational fishing caused by the world's largest No Take Zone. Conclusion Please, please, please Mike - wake up and smell the roses - you have been conned into digging your own regulatory grave. Ask the hard questions - who funds who and why? Why aren't the others sources of 'bycatch' acknowledged? Where is the oil industry's seismic testing 'impact reduction program' for sustainability? Who owns the newspapers and why do they publish what they do? How much of what you read is designed to garner support for the privatsiation/globalisation of fisheries management and facilitate the sale of US fishing rights to foreign companies? Who successfully sued that perpetrators of the USA's( I once thought was Canada's Jim, eh) largest bycatch kill in history - the Exxon Valdiz. Would the same accident cost that company the same if it happened today with the commercial industry universally blamed for fish population collapses and is now on IFQs with quota set annually? ... ----